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‘He’s not fat.’ She wanted to hit him. She squeezed her fingers into a fist, to resist the urge to lash out. ‘He has a traumatic relationship with food.’
‘Uh-huh? All I’ve seen so far is his traumatic relationship with you.’
‘You son of a bitch.’ The Red Arrows hit the sound barrier, the sonic boom going off inside her head as she swung her bunched fist towards his face.
He dodged back, and she hit thin air, flinging herself off balance and tumbling to earth. She body-slammed the ground, her reflexes too dulled by fatigue and incandescent rage to react fast enough to break her f
all. Air gushed out, and pain ricocheted through her ribs, tears stinging her eyes.
She heard a curse, as strong hands gripped her waist and hauled her back onto her feet.
‘You all right?’ His gruff voice reverberated in her head, the low-grade headache now hammering her skull in time with the throbbing pain in what she suspected might be a dislocated shoulder.
‘Piss off,’ she said, but the expletive lacked heat. She hurt everywhere, her pride most of all.
The nausea galloped up her throat as blunt fingers pushed the hair off her brow. ‘You look knackered.’
Of course she did, she’d just hit the deck with enough force to puncture a lung.
‘I think I’m going to be sick,’ she said, her humiliation complete.
‘Put your head down.’
His palm cupped the back of her head and suddenly she was staring at the ground between her feet, studying the decaying leaves and a small beetle burrowing into a mound of twigs and wild grass.
‘Breath through your nose, it’ll go away in a minute.’
She wanted to tell him where he could stick his first aid advice. But she couldn’t speak round the lump of anguish, so she watched the beetle.
‘When did you last eat?’ he asked.
She tried to focus on his voice, which seemed a million miles away. ‘Yesterday morning, before we left home.’
‘Then you’re not likely to be sick,’ he said.
The dizziness and nausea began to subside. He released her head, and drew her upright with the hand he had clamped on her upper arm. The feel of his fingers, rough and cool pressing into her biceps, sent sensation zipping through her system.
Which should have been mortifying, but somehow wasn’t, because the pain had drifted away, to be replaced by a floating feeling. The warm numbness spread through her body.
‘Can you walk?’ he asked.
‘Of course,’ she said, but as she took a step, it was as if she were walking on the moon, about to bounce off into the cosmos.
‘Shit, here we go.’ She heard the husky words still a million miles away, but now from underwater.
Then she wasn’t vertical any more, she was horizontal and focusing on the scar that nicked his chin and made a white sickle shape in the dark stubble.
Her focus faded as she blinked. Once. Twice. The pleasant numbness enveloped her, her limbs going loose and languid, as she sank into a hot bubble bath that smelled of motor oil and laundry detergent and something else – the musty earthy scent of man.
CHAPTER FOUR
Consciousness beckoned through the magical twinkle of stars and the comforting scent of lavender. Ellie’s eyelids fluttered open and she found herself cocooned on an iron-framed double bed, the cluster of fairy lights draped over the mantelpiece opposite dotting a hand-sewn coverlet with sparkles of light.
A dark figure appeared from a door to her right, holding a towel, and looking muscular and intimidating in oil-stained overalls. The magical twinkles surrounded him like dancing fairies until he stepped into the light.
Art.
The dull ache in her ribs throbbed as the events before she’d blacked out came back. Her stomach cramped. And she scooted across the bed, ready to heave over the side. ‘I need a bucket.’
